There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species. - William Somerset Maugham

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.